In April 1938, concerned citizens of Smith Island, Maryland sent a delegation to the mainland. The cause was urgent, a civic emergency that needed to be put before the Somerset County Council. Below is how a local newspaper told the story …
HEADLINE:
Smith Island Holds Dance Craze is a Social Menace
STORY:
“Declaring a current ‘dance craze’ to be a social menace to their young people, a Smith Island citizens’ delegation has taken the problem of what to do about it to Somerset County officials.
“So far, however, the officials have been unable to see their way clear to cut the core out of Smith Island’s big apple or keep the young folks from pairing off for some fox trots.
“Right away the commissioners wanted to know if this dancing was being done in regular dance halls, which they have the authority to license, or simply stores and cafeterias and such, where dancing was a sideline. Sure enough, they found the so-called frolics weren’t being held in regular dance halls.
“That let the commissioners out. They thought maybe the sheriff would be the man to see.
“Sheriff William Dryden said he would be glad to investigate any infraction of the law on the island, but upon the moral question of dancing, he did not feel competent to judge. He had a suggestion, though.
“‘If the island residents would keep their daughters at home of an evening it would soon put an end to it,’ he suggested. ‘The men certainly couldn’t dance together!'”
NOTE: The story appeared in the Salisbury (Md.) Daily Times on April 14, 1938.
